Chapter Twenty #2
“But I am already wed,” Kate said. “What about Wroth?” She held her breath, unable to bear the thought that Jasper had already killed her husband.
Her mind, cleared of its usual clutter, focused on Grayson with startling clarity. All the disagreements between them suddenly seemed petty and absurd, as nothing compared to what she felt for him, and Kate realized that she wanted him always, whether he loved her or not.
Jasper shrugged. “Naturally, I would have liked to include Wroth in our little conflagration, but he is a bit too clever to fall into such a simple trap. However, since he is as rich as a nabob, I doubt he will begrudge me your trifling estate.”
Kate released a ragged sigh of relief into the stillness, cut off when she saw movement in the shadows.
“You are wrong.”
Grayson! Kate’s joy at the sound of her husband’s voice was tempered by fear for his safety. Was he alone? Armed? Jasper was a desperate man with no conscience, capable of anything, and as if to prove it, he smirked in greeting.
“Welcome to our little party, my lord. You’re just in time to die.”
“I think not,” Grayson said, with his usual cool confidence, and Kate saw the moonlight glint off a weapon, pointed straight at her uncle’s chest.
Jasper sucked in a swift breath, but made no move. “It appears that we have a stalemate, my lord. You may shoot me, but then what of your wife? Brown here will take delight in killing her, I’m sure.”
“Oh, no, he won’t,” Kate said, and before Brown could turn toward her, she pulled out her gun and fired. The explosion rocked her, and she blinked, opening her eyes to the sight of Grayson knocking out Jasper with a fierce blow to the face.
“Grayson, there, may be others outside,” she warned, afraid that the noise would draw them.
“No, I came upon them when I arrived,” he said, stepping gingerly toward where Brown lay prone on the tiles. Kate had no idea how her husband, alone, had subdued the others, nor did she care.
He was alive! Her hands began to shake as he stood looking down at the villain she had laid low. Then Grayson lifted his head, his mouth twisted into a shaky grin.
“I see your aim has improved,” he said.
Grayson made his way upstairs, his weariness overtaken by a combination of anticipation and wariness at the prospect of facing his wife.
They had not had a moment alone since the shooting. He had been busy meeting with the magistrate, arranging for Jasper’s imprisonment and the removal of Brown’s body, and taking care of other details that could not be left to his newly revived men.
Meanwhile, Kate had been brewing tea and tending to a distraught Lucy, whose condition had made the night’s events even more harrowing for her. But not Kate. She had braved it all with her usual strength and spirit.
Grayson’s stomach clenched as he remembered the sight of his wife, facing her uncle and his henchman. For the first time in his life, Grayson had known real fear, watching from the shadows as she stood her ground, knowing that any moment they might hurt her, that he might be too late.
It had been a nightmare, but at least he had been here.
If not for Charlotte… Grayson vowed to send Wycliffe’s wife a belated, yet very expensive, gift for her baby, perhaps a small estate.
If she had not challenged him, he might not have ridden back to Kate, heedless of the hour, only to find Hargate under siege and his guards knocked senseless.
The denouement had come quickly, thanks to Kate’s quick thinking and marksmanship, but whenever he thought of her risking herself for him, Grayson felt nauseous and dizzy. He drew in a harsh breath, his emotions running primitive and wild.
And now he must summon a different kind of courage, the kind he needed in order to bare his soul to another.
Silently he moved to the bedroom door and turned the handle, unwilling to disturb Kate, if she slept.
It was near dawn, and she deserved to rest. Slipping inside, he shut the door quietly and leaned against it, only to see her rise from the bed.
She was awake, waiting for him, and Grayson expelled a ragged burst of air at the knowledge.
“Kate.”
She came to him, a shadowy vision in a lacy white gown, and all thoughts of speech fled as desire struck him more powerfully than ever. It had been so long. He reached for her, his hand winding into her soft curls, his mouth closing over hers.
“Kate, Kate, my Kate, my own...” He was babbling against her lips, and she was making soothing noises as she pushed the coat from his shoulders and dragged his shirt over his head. He let her, reveling in her touch, in her sweet, minty fragrance, in Kate.
“I’ve missed you so.”
For a moment, Grayson thought he had spoken the words he’d so often thought aloud, but it was Kate who spoke, Kate who had missed him.
Shaking his head in wonder, he blurted out the first thing that came into his head. “I love you.”
“What?” She blinked up at him, as if in disbelief.
Grayson took her face in his hands and gazed into her twilight eyes, seeing there the nebulous something he had been searching for—and resisting ever since he first glimpsed it. “I love you.”
“That’s all I ever wanted,” she whispered, her voice catching.
Was it this easy, after all his torment? Surely she deserved more—and he deserved less than what she was giving him. He shook his head again. “I was a fool and a coward, afraid of what you made me feel,” he said.
“And arrogant and selfish,” Kate said.
He could do nothing except nod, although he questioned the arrogance.
“And stubborn,” she added.
He raised a brow, for he could claim the same of her, and Kate laughed softly, as though reading his thoughts. If only she could have read them so easily before, but he had kept them to himself. And from himself.
Grayson drew a deep breath in an effort to make a promise such as he had never made before. “But I’ll try to be less of all those things. And if you allow me, I would like to stay here with you at Hargate.”
Was he holding his breath? He released it when Kate’s lips curved into the kind of smile he hadn’t glimpsed in some time, the kind that had made him realize this woman was different, special, for him.
“Wherever you are, that is where I want to be,” she said. “Though I would prefer not to spend too much time in London." She put her arms around him, laying her cheek against his chest and hugging him as if she never would let him go.
“You won’t run away?” Grayson asked, his throat thick with emotion.
She lifted her head and looked at him with the direct gaze that he so admired. “I’m through running away, if you are.”
“I am,” Grayson said. He was done with running and hiding from his own happiness and struggling against his more primitive urges. It seemed he had been fighting temptation ever since he met Kate, but no longer.
In one swift movement, he swung her into his arms and carried her to the bed, where he planned to keep her until they both were limp and sated, no matter how long—or how often—it took.